Left Over Ham = Magic

    Oh blissful silence.  The house is so quiet that I can actually hear the clock ticking.  I had forgotten what silence sounded like.  The holidays are over and my little darlings are back at school.  I had made myself all kinds of promises as to things that I would get accomplished while the kids are home, and may have done one of them.  I was going to work tirelessly and teach the big kids their times tables (they don't teach them their times tables in school anymore).  I had bought prizes and we were going to have drills.... but they were having too much fun and we ran out of time.  I was going to redesign my laundry room and make it more efficient for space... nope.  I promised that I would be organized for back to school, have a weeks worth of snacks and muffins and meals... nope, we went to a friends and ended the holidays having fun tobogganing and drinking hot chocolate.

    Last night I tucked the kids into bed and made my way downstairs, wanting to collapse onto the couch to watch TV, but knowing I had lunches to get ready, and actually debating with myself that perhaps for the first time in history I could just get up early and make their lunches.... bad idea.  I pulled open my bread drawer, I had wraps.... yes.  The next big question was what do I fill the wraps with?  I had forgotten to pick up lunch meat.  I opened the fridge, and there peeking back at me in pink delight was last night's left over ham from dinner.

    I cubed up the ham into small pieces.

I finely chopped up some celery and added it to the chopped ham.

    My next step was to take a little more than half a cup of mayonnaise and mix it in a small bowl with about a half a teaspoon of mustard and half a teaspoon of honey.  I whisked that together and then mixed it into the ham.  The final step, roll up those wraps.  Let's hope the kids like it.  With my kids it's a bit of a crap shoot.  Some will come home raving about it, some will tell me it was disgusting and because of my incompetence they are starving (o.k. none of them have ever used the word "incompetence", but I could tell from their eyes they were thinking it).  I have decided at least with my kids I can always win, so why not just roll the dice.

Lunch Lady Friday- December 14

    Happy Friday!  Once again this Lunch Lady Friday is not woo woo, and you know what, they don't have to be.  It's about putting in some effort, not making yourself sick trying to be perfect.  To me it's about the little fun extras.  The extra little touches don't need to take a lot of time, because let's face it, who among us has lots of extra time?  This lunch took me a fraction longer than would a boring lunch to prepare.  

    I found really cute little Christmas containers in Target while we were in the States last week-end.  I am pretty sure that they are intended for Christmas baking storage, but they fit the bill for me.  The larger size container fits into their lunch pails perfectly, and the little ones fit into the larger one perfectly.

    For today's lunch I made whole wheat ham and cheese wraps.  I like to grate the cheese for wraps, because it allows me to wrap them better.  You just need a little cheese when you grate it.  To close the wraps I used the adorable little winter picks.  They came from the dollar store and were in a package with muffin liners, it was a win win.  I added a tiny little snowman cheese.  I love the tiny cookie cutters, they are perfect for little embellishments.

    I filled the little Glad containers with sliced cucumber and the other one with Christmas coloured Goldfish Crackers.  I always add a treat, and today's treat was a pre-wrapped Cosmic Brownie.  I do prefer to try to make the food my children eat from scratch, but I'm human.  I give myself permission not to be perfect.  It's o.k. to make life easy sometimes.  A little bit of junk won't hurt them, and it will make my life easier.

    So there you have it folks, Lunch Lady Friday.  Tomorrow I will continue the story of our adventure to the  Adirondack Mountains.  

Apple Brown Betty For Lunch

    You may recall me mentioning the fact that my family just went apple picking on Sunday.  We picked 20 pounds of beautiful red Mcintosh and Empire apples.  It is tradition that on the evening we pick apples I make a brown betty.  History has taught me that one brown betty is never enough.  I made two big apple brown bettys and a batch of homemade vanilla ice-cream to go with it.  

    While I was making my brown betty I thought that I should pack the kids a bit of brown betty for their lunch dessert.  The problem is that it always looks so pretty in the casserole dish, but loses that pretty when it's dished out in a bowl, or lunch container.  I wondered how I could pack the kid's brown betty, but keep as much of the sweet, crusty top intact.  That was when I had my big idea.  I don't want to sound too full of myself, but I feel safe in calling myself a genius on this one.  O.K., genius may be stretching, but I have to say it's pretty clever.  I made apple brown betty in my muffin tins.  They are the perfect size for my new favourite ziploc lunch storage containers.

    It only took two apples to make 6 mini apple brown bettys.  I cut them extra small to fit them into the cupcake papers.  

    I then topped the sliced apples with my brown betty mix (1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 tsp of salt).  I baked them for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. 

Oh they looked pretty and smelled even prettier after they were finished.

    It's funny when I cracked open my cookbook.  You can easily tell my family's favourite recipes without even having to ask.  Just look through my cookbooks.  The pages that are pristine, are not our favourites.  It's the ones that are barely legible, covered in grease marks, and food splatter.  

    At the end of the night I had packed 4 lunches.  The brown bettys were the perfect size for the compartment, easy peasy.

School Lunches

I have to admit it, this blueberry bagel with cream cheese
gives me the giggles every time I look at it.
 (no one ever said that I was right in my head).

    I hate making school lunches!  It is the bane of my existence (o.k. that may be just a tad melodramatic).  It takes a long time, especially now that I am making 4 lunches.  The other thing that I hate, is that every stinking kid likes and hates something different, I have the memory of a sieve.  All of that said, I became inspired earlier this year.  You may recall my undignified begging for votes for the Circle of Mom's "Mom's of Multiples" contest.  At the same time that my contest ran, there was a contest for mom's with food blogs.  It is on these blogs that I became addicted to "bento".

These are just loot bag trinkets and cupcake picks.

    I made a vow that I would make my kid's lunches more exciting, even if it was just once a week.  I began to investigate where I could get all of the marvelous bento products.  They have a gadget that you put a boiled egg in, and it shapes the boiled egg into shapes, like Hello Kitty, and Teddy bears, if that's not cool, I don't know what is!  So locally I was out of luck, as I suspected that I would be.  I went to Toronto, you know Toronto, Canada's largest city?  No bento to be had at least where I was looking.  I am stubborn, (just ask my husband), and I was not going to give up on this quest... even if it killed me, and made everyone around me wish for death.

    Early this summer I began to collect cool cookie cutters, and little trinkets.  We stopped at Party City, and I loaded up on the little loot bag toys.  There were some really fun items.  I also found cupcake picks, which would serve my purpose.  I hit the dollar store and loaded up on fun and colourful cupcake liners, and fancy toothpicks (you know the ones with the sparkly ends).

    I have discovered that I am in love with the Ziploc divided containers.  They keep everything separate, and it reduces the amount of dish washing that I am forced to do... I like that very much.  The kid's are getting a kick out of them too (I wonder where they get their sense of being easily amused?)

    For Elly (she's not 4 until October) I use snap lids.  They are much easier for her to open by herself.  The week before school started I got her to practice opening and closing them.  Elly is a really big Hello Kitty fan, so she is quite easy to please.  Although it is hard to tell, the sandwich is cut using a Hello Kitty cookie cutter.  I found really pretty cupcake liners at the dollar store, and I use them just to pretty up the lunches.  I have ones with cars on them for Rowan's lunches.

    The meal is not complete without a love note.  On the days that I forget to pack one, I hear about it after school.  Last year I started something really, really stupid.  I began sending jokes and riddles on their love notes, and sometimes cartoons.  Those love notes are too time consuming, and I have decided to forgo them for this year (so says the idiot who will in all likely hood begin the time consuming notes).  It was really important when they first started school, and had separation anxiety to tell them I was still there, even if I wasn't with them.

    I do not get oooohhhs and awwwws from the kids about their lunches, but I know that they notice, and I notice.  I know that I am making a special effort.  I go to lots of effort once a week (except for Elly's lunch which I snazzy up everyday... don't tell the other kids).  I am just trying to take the monotony out of lunches.  How many bologna sandwiches can eat, am I right?

    If you want to see some impressive food preparation, I suggest that you visit these blogs.....

littlenummies.net

bobbisbentos.com

They really inspire me to do better!  They make me want to create more interesting lunches.

Ice- Cream Cone Cupcakes

The Ice-Cream Cone Cupcakes ...

    I have had a lot of people asking me how I made the ice-cream cone cupcakes.  It made me decide that I would do a step- by -step for anyone who wanted the instructions.

Step #1  Make your cake batter (although in almost every instance I prefer scratch above mix, this is not the case for cake.  I think that cake mix is so much more moist than any scratch cake I have ever made).

Step #2 Take ice-cream cones and put them into a 9X13 baking dish ( I used a 9x9 for this batch).

Step #3 Fill the ice-cream cones with cake batter.  You don't want to over fill them, I know this from experience, what a mess!  Fill them to about 3/4 of the way up to the top of the cone.

Step #4 Cook the cup cakes for about half an hour at 350 degrees on the centre rack.   Let them cool.

Step #5 To get the rainbow effect, take a Q-tip and dip it into food colour gel.  I then ran stripes of food colour up the sides of the icing bag.  It helps to put the icing bag into a large cup to stabilize it.     

                   

Step #6  I start the icing around the outside of the cupcake.  I then circle around to the inside.  I put  pressure on the icing bag when I finish and then pull up, to make the ice-cream swirl.

Step #7 Eat and enjoy!

Pizza Rolls

     Sunday, my busiest day of the week.  The day I try to get a leg up on the week ahead.  I try to catch up on laundry all the while baking my brains out.  Today I added to the normal Sunday routine by adding "Super bowl" snacks to my list.  Super bowl Sunday is the one day of the year I am a kind a dutiful wife.  Super bowl Sunday is the day that my husband feels my love.  Normally I really pull out all the stops, but this year we are really pinching the pennies because we are taking the family to Disney World in March.
    Today for this weeks lunches I pulled a double duty.  I made cinnamon bun dough do two things.  I made plain cinnamon buns for breakfasts/ lunch snacks.  Normally I like to make a Saint Cinnamon Bun type of cinnamon bun with gooey sauce, but that does not translate well into school lunches.  I then put a spin on that and made pizza buns.  Pizza buns are a huge hit at our house.  They freeze well, and they are good hot or cold.  I just take cinnamon bun dough (it's pretty much bread dough), and add pizza sauce, grated mozzarella cheese, and usually pepperoni, but today chopped up summer sausage, then I roll them.

Roll it all up.

    I bake the pizza buns for the same time that I bake the cinnamon buns.  I really like the Company's Coming Cookbooks and used the "Bread" one for this recipe.  If anyone would like the recipe, I would be happy to share.